Start Over With Family This Thanksgiving

Like most people, you may experience ups and downs with the family. Families often become somewhat disconnected due to years of building little resentments or creating judgments of one another, because people in families often live life a bit differently than each other — most thinking that their way is best.

The Thanksgiving holiday is a perfect time to offer up some ideas that each can consider for bringing the family back to what you want it to be and start having more fun with each other in the light of love and connection.

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Below is an example of a dialog that can take place at your house — with appropriate revisions to best suit your family situation of course. In doing some version of this at your Thankgiving dinner table, you offer a way for acceptance, appreciation, gratitude, peace and love and open everyone up to the possibility of enjoying each other in a new light.

Here's how it's going to go down at my house:

As we all join at the table with the feast before us, everyone is anticipating the the delicious meal we're about to devour. I'll have everyone's attention for just a time before the traditional instruction from the host of "Let's eat!" is announced. Everyone knows that I can't help but take the opportunity, when Thanksgiving happens at my house, to go around the table before we eat asking everyone to express a bit of gratitude for something, in the spirit of the day.

This year will be a little different. This is what I'll say:

"I'm so happy that we're all here together today. You all know my sister and I (now the elders of the family) recently spent a few days together at her new weekend get-away place. Throughout that time, we discussed the current state of disconnection with the family — this is not where we want it to be.

We both embraced one idea that came to us, after recognizing judgments of one another is keeping our families from being together more often and enjoying each other more when we do spend time — like today. Kids, I'm mostly speaking of the adults here, but we are passing all of this on to you in subtle ways, so I want you all to pay attention as well.

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We decided it would be a good idea to get the family together to consider one idea that will allow us to love and enjoy each other more freely. It will feel good and we can have more fun! Who wants to feel good and have more fun with and around each other? Good! Because we are it! All of us here are the family that we get to go through this life with — and more will be coming.

The idea is simply this ... It's human nature to judge others. It's not the ideal part of human nature, but it does exist in all of us. And as it is throughout the world, judgments usually occur in families when someone is not living the life that you've picked for yourself as the best way to do it. So we thought it would be nice if we saved that trait of human nature for the rest of the population outside of our family and keep a "no-judgment" policy among us.